


Up will come back all the hurt

by OhGoshOhJeez



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Childhood Trauma, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Molestation, Past Rape/Non-con, csa tw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-02
Updated: 2018-06-02
Packaged: 2019-05-17 02:27:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14823477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OhGoshOhJeez/pseuds/OhGoshOhJeez
Summary: TW for rape/noncon and mentions of Charlie's relationship with Jack.------------“Hey.” Charlie patted Dennis’ shoulder, softly. “Do what you wanna do in life, and know that there’s nothing wrong with that.” He smiled, this surely would work.“Oh,” Dennis raised his eyebrows. “What I wanna do? Hm, well,”Charlie barely registered what happened next.He heard a loud smacking sound, which he didn’t even realize was the result of Dennis striking him until he felt a sharp sting bloom across his cheek.He let out a soft whimper, his arms curling in on himself.Then, a memory.





	Up will come back all the hurt

The waiting room was fucking depressing.

Faded blue walls, old pamphlets littered around the place, the chairs were uncomfortable and it smelled...Clean? Like a hospital type of clean-smell. But Charlie was staying positive! The therapist said he’d never done anything wrong in his life and he believed her, he believed in himself!

Dennis was getting worked up over Mac not taking his “size pills” and Charlie felt the need to intervene. He was a changed man, after all, and if he could change, Dennis could too.

He moved the sobbing Frank off his lap and stood up.

“What do you mean ‘no thank you’?” Dennis looked confused.

“Good for you.” Charlie said to Mac, Dennis stared daggers at him.

“Yeah, I wanna do this the right way. The therapist implied that God wanted me to have bovine hormones and I think she’s gonna get them for me.” Mac said, proudly.

Charlie patted Dennis on the back to get his attention.

“Dennis, can I give you some advice?”

He turned, glaring.

“Absolutely not.”

Charlie pressed on, anyway, determined to help.

“Hey.” Charlie patted Dennis’ shoulder, softly. “Do what you wanna do in life, and know that there’s nothing wrong with that.” He smiled, this surely would work.

“Oh,” Dennis raised his eyebrows. “What I wanna do? Hm, well,”

Charlie barely registered what happened next.

He heard a loud smacking sound, which he didn’t even realize was the result of Dennis striking him until he felt a sharp sting bloom across his cheek.

He let out a soft whimper, his arms curling in on himself.

Then, a memory.

_“Come now, Charlie, be a brave boy. You wouldn’t want me to hurt you, would you?”_

_Oh_ **_fuck_ ** _._

Not now, not here, please, god...He couldn’t be remembering this now, not when his friends were all here.

But the way Dennis was looking at him, like a predator ready to devour its prey, it reminded him so much of-

_“I told you, sweetheart, I told you to play nice, now look what you made me do!”_

Charlie’s mouth gaped, he raised his hand up to his cheek, his eyes watering.

_“Ow! Did you just bite me? That’s not very nice, Charlie-”_

_No._

He gritted his teeth.

“Oh, well, I applaud you for that, absolutely, you know,” He could feel the skin around his eye swelling up from where Jack’s-- _Dennis’_ palm met his face. “And now know that I’ll come back at you with-With everything that I have.”

“What do you-”

Charlie’s fist shot out, effectively punching Dennis right in his smug fucking face.

He didn’t give Dennis a time to process, instead, he grabbed his shoulders and pushed him onto the couch next to them, pinning him down with his thighs like Jack had done to him all those years ago. His eyes were glazed over in a haze of rage, he was biting so hard down on his own lip he could taste copper and the ringing in his ears wouldn’t stop. He could fucking see, taste and hear _red_.

He could faintly hear Frank yelling something, some _bullshit,_ but his mind was too far gone. He landed punch after punch until Dennis’ cries were nothing more than a garbled mess.

“Fuck you, Jack! Fuck you _Dennis_!”

He could see Dee and Frank rush him out of the corner of his vision and they pulled him back by his shoulders, he heard Mac cry out something from the doorway.

There was so much red, his fists were covered in it. Oh god, there was so much blood, when had there been that much blood?

“Oh my god, oh _shit_ , dude, I think he killed him!” He heard Mac scream over the noise.

Charlie gave one last weak punch to the air, before crumbling down into a mess of sobs and shouts.

“Charlie, Charlie, oh my god- What the- What the fuck did you do?!” Dee yelled, rushing to her brother’s side after making sure Mac and Frank had properly restrained the crying man.

“Shit- Shit...He’s not dead but Charlie really, really fucked him up, oh my god.”

Charlie panted, heavily, like he’d ran a marathon.

His knuckles stung and he felt a dull pain through his fingers.

He’d only ever had fought back once in his childhood. Jack was in his bedroom, the usual routine for night time, but that time Charlie had enough. He had bitten down hard on his hand, causing him to yank it back and let out a shout. Before Charlie knew it, his head was being whipped to the side from the impact of Jack’s slap and he was crying, big ugly tears like he was right now.

“He- He hit me!”

“Well, yeah Charlie, we got that but you didn’t have to knock his teeth out!” Dee said, helping Dennis up so he didn’t choke on his own blood.

“You don’t understand! None of you get it- You- you’ll never get it!” Charlie wiped his eyes, the blood from his hands smearing across his face.

“What the hell are you talking about, man?!”

Dennis let out a weak cough, a crimson trail leaking from his mouth and onto the floor, not looking at him. Charlie froze, pitying the man, before strengthening his resolve once again.

“Fuck you! Fuck all of you! I’m not a kid anymore, you can’t just hit me whenever you feel like it.” He didn’t wait for a reply, choosing instead to storm out of the waiting room, wiping the tears and snot from his face.

So much for being positive.

 

* * *

 

 

Charlie didn’t visit Dennis in the hospital.

What was the point, anyway, he was let out in a few hours after the incident, a few teeth were broken, his eye was shut over from swelling, but other than that, he was perfectly fine. According to Dee, anyway.

Charlie raised the whiskey bottle to his lips and wrapped his blanket around him tighter, his nose itching from when he inhaled a can of spray paint. He shivered, he hadn’t paid for the damn heat so his apartment was freezing cold. He felt naked, even though he had slapped on basically all the clothes he had. A scarf, hat, two pairs of socks, a sweater and his sleep pants. He was still cold.

He could remember the warmth of Jack’s hands on him and, so, maybe the cold was a good thing. It reminded him that Jack wasn’t here now.

He wasn’t high enough. Or, maybe he was too high. Either way, it wasn’t good.

Charlie heard a knock at his door and wiped the white paint from his nose, doing little to rub it off.

“Listen, Dee, if you’ve come to bitch to me about your dumbass brother, I don’t wanna hear it,” He started, getting up off the couch and walking over to the door.

“I just want to be by myself, is that too much to ask you goddamn bird-” He cut himself off as he swung the door open.

It was _Dennis_.

He looked...Sheepish. And he shifted his weight nervously, not looking Charlie directly in the eye.

“We need to talk.”

\-----------------

 

Well, this was awkward.

Dennis and Charlie were awkward people in general, but this was even _more_ awkward because Charlie had beaten Dennis’ face in a few hours ago.

“What are you doing here, man.” Charlie said. They were both sitting down on Charlie’s beat up couch, Dennis was fidgeting with his hands.  “I didn’t think you’d wanna see me after…”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Dennis said, and Charlie felt his face drain, probably the same color as the paint he’d inhaled.

“Wh--What are you talking about?”

“You know what I’m talking about, Charlie.” Dennis gave him a serious look, which made Charlie feel uncomfortable. Fuck it, there was no point in keeping it from him now.

“Knowing you, you’d probably make fun of me for it.”

“Why the fuck would you think that?! Don’t you think I haven’t experienced shit like that before?”

“What the hell do you mean?”

“Mrs. Klinsky!”

Silence swept through the room as Charlie stared at Dennis, whose eyes were narrowed. He was blinking rapidly, trying to avoid crying in front of him.

“Shit, dude…”

“I just- I wish you’d told me, I never would’ve…” Dennis trailed off.

“What? You wouldn’t have hit me?” Charlie scoffed. He licked his lips, a nervous habit he’d picked up as a child. “Dennis, even IF I hadn’t gone through that, do you really think you hitting me would’ve been okay?”

“I- I didn’t know.”

“That’s not the point!” His voice was shrill and he cringed internally at the sound of it. “Even if I hadn’t...Even if I wasn’t molested, you shouldn’t have done that.”

“You beat the shit out of me, dude, I think we’re even!”

Charlie just sighed, annoyed.

“You made me feel like I was back there, Dennis and I...I didn’t know what else to do.”

Dennis swallowed, his one good eye staring at him. He looked almost like a kicked puppy.

“When...When I was fourteen,” Dennis’ voice broke, so he cleared his throat. “I got beaten up at school.”

“Dude, we all got beaten up at school.”

“I know but, I wasn’t supposed to be, I was- I was popular, I was a god compared to them!” He said, defensively, before calming down again, a certain sorrow in his voice. “I hid in the library. No one else was there cause none of those morons cared about educating themselves.”

Charlie’s stomach tightened into knots, he had an inkling of where this was going.

“I was crying and bleeding and my face hurt and then...She was just...There.”

Dennis sniffled and Charlie cursed himself for beating him.

“She...She made me feel special. And she told me that I was still handsome, even though my lip was busted and my face was bruised up.”

“Dennis, I-”

“I thought...I thought for so long that what she did to me was right. Cause no one else treated me like that, no one understood me like she did but...That wasn’t true, was it?” He said, almost pleading with Charlie to comfort him. Dennis’ lip wobbled and Charlie felt himself tearing up.

“She never cared about me, did she?”

“...No.” Charlie said, his voice soft.

The dam finally broke and to Charlie’s dismay, the tears Dennis held back were now trickling down his face and he let out a sob, bringing his hands up to the sides of his head.

Charlie leaned over and wrapped his arms around him. He was crying, too. From the shock of it all, from the memories that he’d pushed down for so long.

“It’s okay, it’s okay.” Charlie said, his face buried in Dennis’ shoulder.

“I’m so sorry.”

He’d never heard Dennis say sorry before and he’d never seen him cry, it was almost surreal.

“It’s okay, I’m sorry, too.”

Dennis let out a shuddering breath and Charlie shushed him, gently, holding him in his arms until their sobbing died down and the horribleness of their memories washed away like the tide.

Charlie rarely understood Dennis and, Dennis rarely understood Charlie. But they both could understand each other’s pain and, that’s really all that they needed. Someone who understood.

Tomorrow, they would pretend nothing had ever happened. That Charlie never held Dennis as he sobbed into his chest, that they had never bared their souls to each other like that. But tonight, they were together, and that was all that mattered, really.


End file.
